Negro Bill Canyon & Morning Glory Natural Bridge

Well my legs have recovered enough that we decided to go for yet another hike, this time into a canyon and along a perennial stream to the back of a canyon. The trail crossed the stream six times, which was great for Laia allowing her little feet to cool off and there were rocks strategically placed for human feet. It was about 2 miles to the back of the canyon where it dead ends at Morning Glory Natural Bridge, which is the 6th largest natural bridge in the United States.

Looking toward the entrance of the canyon

It was lovely and cool back there, with water seeping out of a crack in the rock to form a pool of water for the various dogs to drink. While we where there having a snack, a large heavy backpack thrown from above suddenly landed very near a woman who was also enjoying her snack. Then a rope fell over the side of the bridge above us and rappellers started coming down. Damn, there are people dropping out of the sky everywhere around here.

6 responses to “Negro Bill Canyon & Morning Glory Natural Bridge”

You certainly are developing a compositional eye for photography. As to the flowers… there are few I recall from previous trips, but the red one appears, again, to be Indian Paintbrush. You really must find an inexpensive field guide; there were never so many in the Autumn! As to rappelers… it’s rather inconsiderate of them isn’t it? I wonder just how many head traumas are had from such?

We did see a small guidebook in one of the State Park stores and never bought it, should have since I haven’t seen it since. As to the head injuries, we were surprised by the rappelers technique, they were very close to hitting the poor lady on the head.

Looks warmish, gorgeous flowers! The last, California poppies? love ’em, trying to grow them here…
Loving this blog thing, great to follow the trail! wish we were able to come too, miss you guys xx Allie 🙂

All nice pictures. The second picture from the top with the pink cactus flowers (“cactus just starting to bloom”) depicts Sclerocactus parviflorus. The fourth picture from the top is an Indian paintbrush as previously indicated above; there are several species that occur in the area and two of them can hybridize, but looks closest to Castilleja scabrida var. scabrida (that is more commonly associated with the eastern part of the state rather than here). The last picture contains both the red-flowered Claret-cup cactus, Echinocereus mojavensis (some refer to it as “triglochidiatus” but that is no longer correct) and the orange-flowers belong to a globemallow, Sphaeraclea parvifolia.

Thank you Tony. The flowers were fantastic and it was a wonderful time of year to be there. That trip was almost 2 years ago but a return trip is in our plans. I’ve saved your website to use for future reference.